At slightest 8 aged people died in a breathless South Florida nursing home after it apparently mislaid a atmosphere conditioning amid ongoing, widespread energy outages associated to Hurricane Irma.

The deaths, that stirred a rapist review Wednesday, were what many feared competence occur after Irma knocked out energy for millions of people in Florida, a state famous for its omnipresent heat. Without a remit of atmosphere conditioning, a feverishness poses a sold hazard to Florida’s vast race of aged residents, who are some-more receptive to heat-related illnesses.

In Hollywood, Fla., where temperatures are foresee to strech a 90s by a finish of a week, authorities were called early Wednesday to a Rehabilitation Center during Hollywood Hills, a nursing home not distant from Fort Lauderdale with a uneasy history.

What they found was gruesome: Three people inside already were dead, while other patients were in “varying degrees of medical distress,” city officials said. At slightest 5 were conspicuous upheld later, while dozens of a home’s residents were energetic from a gloomy building to internal hospitals, including Memorial Regional Hospital only down a street.

Those who died — 5 women and 3 group — were between a ages of 71 and 99.

“We trust during this time it competence be associated to a detriment of energy in a storm,” Tomas Sanchez, a Hollywood military chief, conspicuous during a news lecture Wednesday. “It’s a unhappy event.”

Police after conspicuous they are operative to establish what caused a tragedy, yet early indications forked during a atmosphere conditioning in a facility.

“The initial review has dynamic that a facility’s atmosphere conditioning complement was not entirely functional,” Hollywood city officials conspicuous in a matter Wednesday evening. “Portable [air-conditioning] units were being used in a facility, yet a trickery was excessively hot.”

The initial call came in to firefighters during 3 a.m. Wednesday, about a studious believed to be in cardiac arrest, officials said. Firefighters returned to a trickery an hour after for a studious with respirating problems, and they afterwards called a state group with concerns about a facility. When a third call for assistance came in, some-more Hollywood Fire Rescue crews were dispatched, and they were assimilated by Memorial Regional Hospital staff.

“There was no atmosphere conditioning,” conspicuous Randy Katz, authority of a dialect of puncture medicine during Memorial. “The temperatures, quite on a second floor, were intensely hot.”

Ellie Pina, whose 96-year-old mom Mirelle is a proprietor during a center, conspicuous a trickery had been using on generators given a energy went out on Sunday while Hurricane Irma swept by Florida. Pina conspicuous she and others regularly called Florida Power and Light about a miss of electricity and were ignored.

“I told Florida Power and Light a generators were going to give adult soon. And it happened,” conspicuous Pina, reciting her sheet number, that available her seeking help. “I told my father people were going to die in there. And it happened.”

Florida Power and Light, that conspicuous Wednesday it serviced partial of a facility, conspicuous it extended a sympathies to those who mislaid desired ones and was singular in what it could contend given of a investigation.

Robert Gould, arch communications officer for Florida Power and Light, a state’s largest utility, conspicuous during a lecture Wednesday that Broward County did not list a Hollywood trickery as vicious infrastructure in a whirly formulation assembly progressing this year. Such locations are prioritized for energy replacement after a charge given of a services they yield to exposed people.

Broward County said in a statement Wednesday that it comparison vicious infrastructure formed on a Florida Power and Light superintendence document. Going by this document, a county said, nursing homes were deemed “non-critical.”

On Tuesday, a county said, a nursing home contacted Broward officials to contend it had mislaid power, information a county conspicuous it reported to a energy company. The nursing home reported after Tuesday that a tree was on a transformer, Broward said, information that was also relayed to a utility.

“Hollywood Hills, when asked if they had any medical needs or emergencies, did not ask assistance or prove any medical puncture existed,” Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief conspicuous in a statement.

Pina conspicuous a nursing home’s staff set adult unstable atmosphere conditioners and put patients, dressed in as small as possible, in a hallways tighten to a cooling units. She was there Monday and Tuesday around noon and conspicuous it was intensely hot.

“They were perplexing to assistance a people,” she conspicuous of a staff, that she conspicuous kept job a application for help. Pina conspicuous she and others also called 911 and perceived no response. A mouthpiece for a Hollywood military declined to criticism over a matter a city had expelled surveying what had happened during a nursing home.

On Wednesday morning, Pina said, she was told by a staffer that “the generators gave up.”

Pina conspicuous her mom is hospitalized yet doing well. She is among a some-more than 150 patients taken from a trickery to one of a hospitals in Memorial’s system. Katz conspicuous they were treated generally for dehydration, respiratory issues including respiratory failure, feverishness depletion and high fevers.

“There’s no reason patients that age with ongoing medical issues should be in a trickery yet atmosphere conditioning,” Katz said.

Federal mandate state that nursing homes contingency have written, minute skeleton and procedures for emergencies and disasters such as serious weather. Kristen Knapp, mouthpiece for a Florida Health Care Association, conspicuous hundreds of comforts for a aged have relied on backup systems given Irma upheld over a state Sunday.

“Throughout this whole process, we haven’t listened of any influenced nursing homes handling yet a generator,” Knapp wrote in an email.

While Hurricane Irma did not perform a many apocalyptic forecasts, a charge still managed to wreak fast massacre opposite all of Florida. After lashing a state and tools of a Southeast with sleet and wind, energy outages remained as a arch concerns. Power companies had easy energy to millions, yet about 3.5 million energy organisation patron accounts in Florida — or one in 3 statewide — still lacked electricity on Wednesday. Utilities have warned it could be days or weeks before a lights come behind on in some places.

This presents a sold risk in Florida, where about 1 in 5 residents are 65 or older. People in that age operation are some-more disposed to heat-related health problems given they do not adjust as good as younger people to remarkable shifts in temperature, are some-more expected to have ongoing medical conditions and mostly take drugs that impact a body’s ability to umpire a temperature, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The aged and a immature are some-more receptive to removing dehydration from a heat,” conspicuous David Gifford, comparison clamp boss of a American Health Care Association. “Keeping them good hydrated is critical and gripping them as cold as possible.”

The Florida association, that represents some-more than 4 in 5 nursing homes in a state — it does not paint a Hollywood trickery — conspicuous about 150 out of scarcely 700 comforts in a state did not have full energy services easy as of Wednesday.

“As with millions of other Floridians, a centers are coping with a detriment of energy and infrastructure in a communities that were many influenced by a devastation,” a organisation conspicuous in a statement.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), a former sanatorium arch executive, called a conditions during a Hollywood nursing home “unfathomable.”

“I am going to aggressively direct answers on how this comfortless eventuality took place,” Scott conspicuous in a statement. “Every trickery that is charged with caring for patients contingency take each movement and prevision to keep their patients protected — generally patients that are in bad health.”

Scott conspicuous he destined dual state agencies — a Department of Children and Families and a Agency for Health Care Administration — to work with internal authorities on a investigation, and he warned that “if they find that anyone wasn’t behaving in a best interests of their patients, we will reason them accountable to a fullest border of a law.”

According to Scott’s office, a trickery had reported as recently as Tuesday afternoon that they had energy and entrance to fans and mark coolers.

The facility’s administrator, Jorge Carballo, conspicuous in a matter sent to media outlets that a core had evacuated “due to a enlarged energy disaster to a transformer that powered a facility’s atmosphere conditioning complement as a outcome of a hurricane.” Carballo did not respond to The Washington Post’s requests for comment.

The trickery has a story of citations, and it is rated “below average” on a Medicare website. Federal records, justice papers and state investigation reports uncover a facility’s owners and managers had lurched from one problem to another during a past decade, including a sovereign bankruptcy, allegations of fraud, complaints from residents and steady support of bad caring and vulnerable conditions.

State inspectors final year found patients who had been left in their night gowns, confronting televisions that had been incited off. Others were unshaven and had untrimmed nails, including a male with blackened, angled nails who had scratched himself raw.

“The trickery unsuccessful to safeguard residents were treated with grace with honour for their individuality and preferences,” a news found, observant inspectors celebrated a “failure to residence residents in a deferential manner.”

State reports uncover violations were available on 23 visits to a trickery given 2010, with a violations in several reports describing systemic mistreatment. Safety also was a steady concern. Smoke alarms, puncture exits and a nursing home’s puncture generator were cited for deficiencies.

In Feb 2016, an examiner wrote that a trickery unsuccessful to say a puncture generator to manufacturer and formula mandate — and that it wasn’t a initial time. More recently, in May, another state central who visited a trickery wrote that he found no problems. “All formerly cited Fire Life Safety deficiencies were corrected” and no new deficiencies were found, he wrote.

Those who died during a nursing home in South Florida were partial of a genocide fee that, while comparatively low compared to other large storms, has solemnly climbed in new days.

In Monroe County, that includes a Florida Keys, authorities have begun vouchsafing residents drip in, yet that segment — where Irma finished landfall early Sunday morning — was still assessing a storm’s toll.

“Contrary to reports, no extensive assessments have been finished to accurately establish commission of repairs or dollar figures,” Monroe County conspicuous in a matter Wednesday.

Scott Unger in Key West, Fla., Leonard Shapiro in Fort Lauderdale, Lori Rozsa in Gainesville, Fla. and Wesley Lowery, Julie Tate and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report, that has been updated via a day.